Many enlightened visitors to Damien Hirst’s exhibition at Tate Modern last
year left unimpressed

Leaf through the visitors’ book in any historic church and you will find maverick comments from people who dropped in: “Very clean” or “Too out of the way”. But most reflect the buildings’ worth. Visitors to Damien Hirst’s exhibition at Tate Modern in 2012 had done more than drop in: they paid £14 each. So they were unlikely to be members of the “Modern Art is Rubbish” club. It is enlightening, then, to read comments of complaint sent to the gallery. One found that the exhibition was “cunningly, successfully purveying nothing”; another thought Hirst a “con artist”. Both remarks discern essential elements of conceptual art as established in Britain in the Nineties. The concepts were sterile; the marketing made up for it. In 2002, an example of Damien Hirst’s “spot art” was sent to Mars. Thank heaven there is no sign of intelligent life there to judge us by it.